The Ripton plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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−6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1981. Next is 0° in 1986.
Ripton’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 2,260 ft, a difference of 1,690 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ellen, about 4,060 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 24 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.4 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 18 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Ripton reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Middle Branch Middlebury, the Middlebury, Otter Creek and the Richelieu: about 180 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ripton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ripton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 112 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Ripton normally reaches 44° and falls to 25°. The record high is 66°, in 2005; the record low −5°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1984.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1981 at South Lincoln, 7 miles north-northeast, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
